Television - Professor Leach

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Chapter 9 Television: Reflecting and Affecting Society Chapter Outline History Industry Controversies © 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved

A Brief History of Television • Early Technology • In 1927, Vladimir Zworykin, a Russian immigrant working for Westinghouse Corporation, developed a circuit for transforming a visual image into an electronic signal. • Around the same time, Philo T. Farnsworth completed a working model for a similar system, and applied for a patent. • Farnsworth had to endure years of suits and countersuits before RCA paid him $1 million for the rights to his patent. • Inventors in several countries including England, Japan and Russia, claim to have come up with the idea of television around the same time.

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A Brief History of Television • David Sarnoff of RCA built one of the first commercial television stations in 1932, with transmitting facilities in the Empire State Building, and spent a million dollars promoting the medium. • Franklin D. Roosevelt became the first president to appear on television when he formally opened the 1939 World’s Fair in New York. • Early TV sets did not sell because they were very expensive, there wasn’t much programming, and there were no technical standards. © 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved

A Brief History of Television • Development of Technical Standards • Each manufacturer wanted to reap profits that would follow if their patents became the broadcast standard. • Some wanted black and white technology to be the standard, while others were working on color and wanted government to wait for it to be perfected. • Other patents involved different lines of resolution, those row of lighted dots, or pixels, that make up the picture image. • In 1941, government and industry agreed that television would present black and white pictures with 525 lines of resolution moving at a speed of 30 frames per second. © 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved

A Brief History of Television • World War II Stops TV’s Growth • Most of the engineers in television joined the military and developed radar, sonar, radio-guided missiles and battlefield communications.

• Post-War Development • In the early 1940s the audience was excited to see any transmitted picture and the industry broadcast anything available including talentless talent, live shots of a sunset and even test patterns. • By 1948, set sales increased by 500 percent over the previous year, and viewership grew by 4000 percent.

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A Brief History of Television • Channel Allocation • Channel allocation is the placement of a station’s frequency on the electromagnetic spectrum used for transmitting electronic signals. • The FCC was charged with ensuring that every community in America would be supplied with at least one channel, with no overlapping or interfering channels and, from 1948 to 1952 placed a freeze on license applications in order to work out the problem. • During that period the number of sets purchased rose from a 250,000 to more than 17 million. © 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved

A Brief History of Television • The Rise of Network Television • At first there were four television networks: NBC, CBS, ABC and Dumont, a network founded by TV manufacturer Allen B. Dumont who got into production to increase demand for his sets. • The Dumont network lacked the radio relationships of the others and could not line up enough affiliates to be attractive to advertisers. Dumont folded in 1955. Its stations went on to become the nucleus of Metromedia Television, which eventually became the Fox network. • Stations not connected by cable had to run kinescopes of network programming.

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A Brief History of Television • Television’s Golden Age • 1948 to 1958 was a time of unusually good dramatic programming. • Quality dramas were needed to attract wealthy, educated viewers who could afford television sets. • Network programming originated in New York City and producers had access to up-and-coming Broadway writers, actors, and directors. • Most television dramas were performed live because videotape recording had not been invented yet, and filming was too expensive.

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A Brief History of Television • Many critics point out that TV had more lowest common denominator content than quality shows. • “I Love Lucy,” “Father Knows Best” and “Ozzie and Harriet” featured women who were either humorously incompetent or subordinate to men who made all important decisions. • Virtually all the playwrights, producers, actors, and directors of the live dramas were white. Minorities were systematically excluded from production jobs. • The 1980s success of the Cosby show opened the door for more black oriented programming with black production staffs. © 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved

A Brief History of Television • The Entrance of the Movie Studios • In 1954 Walt Disney was the first studio leader to associate his name with a television program. In an early example of horizontal integration, Disney saw the possibilities of TV for promoting his Disneyland theme park and his feature films, as well as generating income from the program itself. • After Warner Brothers began producing the western “Cheyenne” for ABC in 1955, all the major film studios started producing television programming as well as feature films.

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A Brief History of Television • Television Changes Family Life • Television continued the social trends that radio had started: bringing the American family indoors to experience programming together, but actually interacting less in the time they spent together. • Families didn’t talk during prime-time programs; they talked among themselves and among outsiders about what they’d seen on television the night before. • “Camel Cavalcade of News” (1948-1956) with John Cameron Swayze is considered the father of television news.

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A Brief History of Television • Television Changes Family Life • News magazines started in 1968 with “60 Minutes.” • Classic children’s shows included “Bozo the Clown,” “Romper Room,” and “Sesame Street.” • “Wide World of Sports” is a classic sports program. • Classic programs are regularly scheduled, longrunning prime-time entertainment programs that changed what people talked about over coffee the next day.

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A Brief History of Television Classic Prime Time

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A Brief History of Television • Television’s Economic Golden Age • By 1966, the networks were broadcasting all their prime-time shows in color and people were rushing out to replace their old black-and-white sets. • Public television was established in 1967. • Television’s economic golden age is thought to have occurred between 1960 and 1980, when the big three networks had few competitors within the industry or outside it. • Independent stations began to compete a little, but the real challenger to network television was cable TV.

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A Brief History of Television • Enter Cable • Cable television began in the 1950s as “Community Antenna Television” (CATV). CATV was designed to give hard-to-reach areas satisfactory reception from the nearest broadcast television stations. • The earliest CATV pioneers were appliance dealers who hoped to sell TV sets. They would install a large antenna on a nearby hilltop, amplify the local station signals that were received, and distribute them to the community by means of a cable. • CATV became cable television in the 1970s when it began to offer additional signals from distant stations, a service called importation. © 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved

A Brief History of Television • One of the first FCC rules for cable was that cable systems could not duplicate network programs on the same day that the network aired them. • Another important regulation came to be known as must carry rules, which said that cable systems had to carry all local televisions stations within each system’s area of coverage. • Cable’s big growth period was between 1970 (10 percent of homes wired) and 1990 (60 percent of homes wired). • Time Inc.’s HBO was the first pay cable channel. • Today’s cable systems carry hundreds of channels.

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A Brief History of Television • Emerging Networks • In 1985, Rupert Murdoch formed the Fox network by purchasing 20th Century Fox studios and the Metromedia chain of independent TV stations. • Ten years later, with shows such as “The Simpsons,” “In Living Color,” “Beverly Hills 90210,” and the broadcast rights to National Football League games, Fox was earning more money per program than CBS or ABC, and, was quickly catching up to NBC. • Warner Brothers (WB) and United Paramount Network (UPN) started within a week of each other in January 1995, after deregulation permitted networks to produce prime-time programs (In 2006, WB and UPN merged into CW – CBS-Warner). © 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved

A Brief History of Television • Adapting to New Technologies • Broadcast television networks compete with newer technologies, including cable, satellite, on-demand video, video games, and the Internet. • The broadcast television industry is preparing for its changeover to digital, high-definition television (HDTV) which promises pictures as clear and crisp as a Cineplex feature. Scanning lines are more than double the standard: 1125 lines instead of the 525 of conventional TV, and the wider HDTV screen features high-quality digital sound, interactivity and various other advanced digital services. © 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved

A Brief History of Television • Adapting to New Technologies • Today, television networks and program suppliers are experimenting with ways to offer programming downloadable from the Internet to home computers, cell phones, and other digital media. • Some experts believe that video on demand (VOD) through these types of downloads will be the wave of the future.

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A Brief History of Television • Adapting to New Technologies • The cultural effects of the VCR were many: • Time shifting • Zapping

• Digital video discs (DVDs) reached the market in 1996, and Digital video recorders (DVRs), specialized computers with oversized hard discs onto which video signals are saved, were introduced in 1999.

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Understanding Today’s Television Industry • The Cable Industry • Today’s cable operations are run almost exclusively by multiple system operators (MSOs), which are companies that own several local cable service providers, usually in different areas of the country. MSOs are generally owned by giant communications corporations like Time-Warner or Comcast. • An MSO must reach a franchise agreement with the local government which generally receives a small percentage of the gross revenues. • Most municipalities require the MSO to provide access channels which are open to the general public on a first come, first served basis. © 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved

Understanding Today’s Television Industry • Basic Cable • Basic cable is made up of channels that are supplied with the least expensive program package the provider offers. These channels, like MTV and CNN, supplement ad revenue by charging the system operator for each subscriber that carries their signal-usually 20 to 50 cents per subscriber, per month. • Today specialized basic cable channels include earliest basic cable channels include ESPN, CNN, MTV, CSPAN (Cable-Satellite Public Affair Network), the Fishing Channel, the Home and Garden Network and more. © 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved

Understanding Today’s Television Industry • Basic Cable • By 2007, the average cable subscriber received 96 channels but only actually watched 15 of them. • Cable companies generally charge for “tiers” or packages of programming that include many channels that individual subscribers don’t use. • The cable industry has so far resisted legislators’ calls for a “a la carte” pricing model that would allow people to receive only the channels they want.

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Understanding Today’s Television Industry • Superstations • The first superstation, a local station delivered to cable systems via satellite, was created in 1976 when Ted Turner sent the signals of WTBS, his Atlanta UHF station, for distribution throughout the country. • Turner raised advertising rates and turned what had been the lowest-rated station in Atlanta into a financial success. © 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved

Milestones in Television History timeline

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Understanding Today’s Television Industry Top Basic Cable Channels

Source: National Cable Television Association at www.ncta.com, accessed August, 2006. © 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved

Understanding Today’s Television Industry • Premium Cable • Premium cable channels such as Home Box Office (HBO), Showtime, and Cinemax provide programming to cable subscribers for an additional fee, over and above what they pay for basic cable. A converter, or cable box, unscrambles the signals for premium cable. • Pay-per-view channels allow customers to order recent feature films, sporting events, concerts, an other special events on a set schedule.

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Understanding Today’s Television Industry • Premium Cable • Public Access Channels are provided by cable systems as part of their community agreements. • Across the U.S., 3000 public access channels operate out of more than a 1000 stations set up by cable companies.

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Understanding Today’s Television Industry • Satellite TV • Satellites were an integral part of the success of cable television, originally being used for point-topoint communications since the 1960s. • In the 1970s satellites were made geostationary, parked 22,300 miles above one section of the earth’s surface. • Direct Broadcast Satellite (DBS) systems deliver television programming to individual homes. • By 2007, satellite companies claimed to have subscribers in almost 25% of television homes making DBS a serious competitor with cable. © 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved

Understanding Today’s Television Industry Satellites in Geostationary Orbit

A geostationary satellite orbits the earth at the same speed that the earth rotates on its axis, making it essentially “parked” in space. In orbit at 22,300 miles, three satellites can cover almost the entire earth. © 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved

Understanding Today’s Television Industry • Broadcast Television • Technically all broadcast television stations are local because signals that emanate from a station’s transmitter will only be seen up to fifty miles from the transmission point unless picked up by cable, or satellite. • There are almost 1600 local TV stations across the United States: 1200 are commercial and 400 are public (PBS). • Half of the 1600 stations are VHF, or Very High Frequency, and operate on a channel from 2 through 13. The other half are UHF, or Ultra High Frequency, channels 14 and up. © 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved

Understanding Today’s Television Industry • VHF stations are historically more profitable than UHF stations because they have stronger signals and greater over-the-air reach, but cable has made the VHF/UHF distinction less relevant. • Stations are licensed to a city but their overall market, which includes surrounding suburbs, is what matters to advertisers that support them. • There are 211 television markets nationwide. © 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved

Understanding Today’s Television Industry U.S. Television Markets

There are 211 television markets nationwide. Source: Nielsen © 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved

Understanding Today’s Television Industry • Network Affiliation • Most network owned and operated stations (O&Os) are in major markets. They are usually the most profitable part of the network. • The majority of broadcast stations are affiliates with a contractual relationship with a network. The network provides programming with national advertising inserted. Local advertising revenue belongs entirely to the affiliate. • Independent stations were less profitable than network affiliates until the 1980s when major market independents started scheduling local professional sports and first-run syndicated series. © 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved

Understanding Today’s Television Industry • Station Groups • Nearly all licensees today are group owners with properties in two or more markets. • There is no limit to the number of stations one group can own, but one group cannot combine stations to reach more than 35 percent of the U.S. population.

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Understanding Today’s Television Industry • Program Providers • Networks provide programming to affiliates for a large part of the day. • Program syndication is selling programs directly to stations, cable channels, and online venues, not to the networks. • Off-network programs were earlier on a network and generally need a hundred episodes before being offered in syndication because stations prefer strip programming, or showing a program in the same time slot five times a week. • “Jeopardy,” and “Oprah” are highly profitable in original syndication, which is sale of new programs that were not previously on a network. © 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved

Understanding Today’s Television Industry • Public Television • The Public Broadcasting Act of 1967 created the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) which, in turn created the Public Broadcasting System (PBS), an organization made up of public stations that solicit donations from corporations and viewers. • PBS acts like a network but differs greatly in that it does not produce programming, rather, it helps member stations share programs. • Today’s PBS stations are owned by four groups. © 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved

Understanding Today’s Television Industry PBS Ownership

Today’s public broadcasting stations are owned by four groups. © 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved

Understanding Today’s Television Industry • The Ratings • Rating is the percentage of all homes equipped with TVs that are tuned to a particular station at a particular time. • Share is the percentage of homes in which the television is in use and tuned to a particular station. • A.C. Nielsen collects ratings for network and local stations, syndicated programs, cable channels, and World Wide Web sites. © 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved

Understanding Today’s Television Industry • The Ratings • Overnight ratings are most important to networks while local stations set advertising rates based on ratings during sweep months: November, February, May, and July. • Arbitron, the other major ratings company, is currently developing a wireless people meter that individuals simply carry around with them during the day, while it automatically records all of their media use. • At night, the meter is simply inserted into a docking station and the day’s data is downloaded to Arbitron as the unit charges. © 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved

Understanding Today’s Television Industry Top-Rated Television Programs of All Time

The top-rated television programs were all presented by traditional networks, most of them in the 1970s and 1980s before increased competition led to audience fragmentation. © 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved

Controversies • To reach the greatest possible audience, most television programs are designed to make limited intellectual and aesthetic demands on their viewers but critics are concerned that the quality of lowest common denominator programming damages viewers intellectually and emotionally. • Most critics agree that TV entertainment is too violent – particularly when the violence goes unpunished or when a program ignores the real life consequences of violent acts. • TV producers counter that pleasing the critics would severely impede storytelling. © 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved

Controversies • Extensive research into television indicates that exposure to televised material increases the acceptance of ethnic, racial, and sexual stereotypes. • Producers point out that stereotyping is important in storytelling because it allows writers to establish characters quickly and get on with the plot. • Most critics agree that popular programming such as “Will and Grace” and “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy” have increased tolerance toward gays in the general public. • The FCC requires stations to air three hours of educational programming per week but critics insist that this is not enough. © 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved

Controversies • The Telecommunications Act of 1996 required that new television sets contain V-chips, an electronic device that can be set to recognize and block programs with particular parental advisory rating. • Compulsive television viewers who are college students watch twice as much TV as other students. • Critics say too much time in front of the TV keeps viewers from productively dealing with problems. • Defenders of television insist that TV is no more addicting than any other form of pleasurable activity.

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